A Comedian Dies Read online

  During this speech Charles observed Lennie Barber. The old comedian’s face bore a smile of unambiguous cynicism. How many times must he have heard similar pep-talks, before how many shows which had vanished without a trace? He no longer had any expectations of anything; he knew too much about the injustice and fickleness of the entertainment business to believe in any other power than that of luck.

  He would work himself to death to make the show work, so long as no one asked him to believe in it. Even Charles, who was hardly a Little Noddy in his world-view, found something shocking in the depth of the man’s cynicism.

  Walter Proud, discreetly wishing to maintain a good producer/director relationship, suggested diffidently to Wayland Ogilvie that they should have a straight read-through on the clock to get some idea of how the show ran, unless of course Wayland wanted to approach it a different way. No, Wayland said, he was happy to do it that way, though on the first day of rehearsal he tended to try to picture the overall impact of the programme than get too involved in the script.

  So they started. Charles still had a blind spot about television comedy material; he couldn’t tell what was funny and what wasn’t and, having seen the miracles Lennie Barber had wrought with very indifferent lines in the barbershop sketch, he felt even less qualified to judge. However, Steve Clinton laughed raucously at every joke and there seemed to be sycophantic titters from the production crew from time to time, so maybe this was funny too.

  The trouble was that Charles didn’t have Lennie Barber’s performance and reactions to help in his response. It soon became apparent that the comedian could not read. Not that he was illiterate, but that he couldn’t sight-read and give a performance at the same time. Charles hadn’t met enough comedians to know how common a failing this is. Performers used to working seasoned material or adding new jokes and ad libs in the skirmishing of night club work are very rarely dependent on scripts and can be seriously thrown by trying to give life to words on the printed page.

  Charles’ first reaction was one of fear, that Barber was not going to improve and that this stumbling, ill-timed performance would be the one presented to the studio audience. He rationalized that fear away. Obviously, once he had learned the script, the comedian would start to build his performance, start to characterize and time the lines. But Barber’s inept read-through, particularly when all of the minor comedy supports were giving extravagantly self-indulgent (but funny) cameos, seemed to get the project off to a bad start.

  It was also apparent as they read that the star didn’t like a lot of the script. He kept stopping on jokes, shaking his head and looking up to Walter Proud as if to start discussion, but on each occasion the producer gestured that the read-through should continue and points be raised later. Charles had got the impression that there had already been meetings between Proud, Barber and the writers when rewrites had been demanded, and the whole show (or certainly the bits that Barber appeared in – he showed no interest in the rest) looked like being rewritten a good bit more before the recording day arrived.

  They reached the end of the script and Lennie Barber, in spite of his mood, sang through a verse and chorus of the closing song, the signature tune of the old Barber and Pole Show, Who Cares About Tomorrow When Tonight Is Now?

  Walter Proud leaned across to look over the PA Theresa’s shoulder at her stopwatch. ‘Just about right for time too. Lovely read. Thank you all – sorry, Wayland, I should let you speak first.’

  ‘No. don’t worry. I’m just kind of trying to visualize the overall shape of the conception.’

  ‘Thank you, Wayland. No, I’d really like to say I think we’re really on to something very, very big.’

  ‘Not without some changes we’re not,’ stated Lennie Barber baldly.

  ‘What do you mean, Lennie?’ asked Walter heartily, as if he could will away the dissonant voice. But he had started to sweat. The moment when a star says he’s unhappy with the script is the one that every producer fears, breeder of many coronaries.

  ‘I mean, Walter, that a lot of this stuff is just wrong. There are things in here that I can’t do. For example, that sketch where I go into the chemist and ask for a take-away poltergeist –’

  ‘That’s a bloody good sketch,’ objected Paul Royce.

  ‘That I don’t know. It may be good, it may be bad; all I know is that it’s wrong for me. I can’t play that sort of material.’

  ‘Oh, come on, Lennie,’ Walter cajoled. ‘You don’t know until you’ve tried.’

  ‘I know.’

  Paul Royce looked petulant. ‘I thought the idea of this show was to try out something new, to bring you up to date.’

  ‘Try out something new, yes. But I’m still Lennie Barber. It’s got to be new material but new Lennie Barber material. I haven’t spent a lifetime building up my own comic identity to have it thrown over like this. Listen, that sketch might go all right in Monty Python or whatever it’s called –’

  ‘Oh, so you don’t think Monty Python’s funny?’ asked Paul Royce, leading Barber into a pit of impossibly reactionary depths.

  ‘That’s not the issue. I think they do that sort of stuff very well. And I damned well know that I’d do it very badly. I’ve got to work to my strengths, not show myself up by trying to do things other people do a lot better.’

  Paul Royce’s lip curled. ‘Well, if you’re never going to try anything new . . .’

  Walter Proud came in quickly, placating. ‘Don’t worry. We’ll have a look at that sketch.’

  ‘Not have a look at it – cut it.’

  ‘We’ll see, Lennie, we’ll see. Now if we can get on. I had a few points which –’

  ‘There’s a whole lot more too,’ said Lennie Barber. ‘Stuff that’s going to have to be changed.’

  Everyone looked at the comedian with annoyance. He was not making himself popular. And yet Charles found his respect for the man increasing. Having seen Barber work, he knew the fine instinct that made him function as a comedian. If he said he wasn’t happy with the material, the chances were that he was right. He could only work efficiently with jokes he trusted.

  Ignoring the wall of cold looks around him, Lennie continued. ‘A lot of it’s far too up-market for me, anyway.’

  Paul Royce was again offended. ‘What do you mean – up-market? You should never underestimate your audience. They understand more than you give them credit for.’

  ‘It’s not a matter of whether they understand it; it’s whether they expect to hear it from me. I mean, for example, that joke about Oedipus doing the week’s shopping down at Mothercare.’

  ‘That’s a bloody good joke,’ snapped Paul Royce. ‘Just because you’ve never heard of Oedipus –’

  ‘Of course I’ve bloody heard of Oedipus. He killed his father, Laius, King of Thebes, and married his mother, Jocasta, but that is not the point. The audience would not expect the Lennie Barber they remember to tell a joke like that.’

  ‘That’s assuming any of them remember Lennie Barber at all,’ riposted Paul Royce venomously.

  Walter Proud rushed in with his can of oil for troubled waters, which is standard issue equipment for all producers. To shift the mood of the conversation, he brought in the director. ‘What’s your feeling on this, Wayland?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ The dreamy eyes behind gold-rimmed glasses came back lazily from their reverie. ‘I was just trying to paint a picture of that final monologue. I think we should probably shoot it through something. Ferns, maybe. With the set almost burned-out behind.’

  Charles got the feeling that The New Barber and Pole Show would not be a completely trouble-free production.

  There was a pay-phone in the corridor outside the Drill Hall and he went to it in a rehearsal break. Through the arguments over the script, he had been formulating his next move in the case of Bill Peaky’s murder.

  A girl answered. ‘Miffy Turtle Agency.’

  Her voice was Cockney. They were all Cockney – Miffy, Carla, the late Bill Peaky
. But the feeling they all gave Charles was not of loveable, Dickensian Cockneys, rather of potentially criminal, Kray Brothers type of Cockneys. Miffy particularly, with his solid frame and his flashy jewellery, seemed only one step from a gangster.

  ‘Could I speak to Mr. Turtle, please?’

  ‘Who wants him?’

  ‘My name is Charles Paris.’

  “Ang on a minute.’ Silence. A click. ‘You’re through.’

  ‘Hello, Charles. What can I do you for?’

  ‘Miffy, I wondered if I could come and talk to you.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘Well it’s about my working with Lennie Barber. I mean, you represent him, don’t you?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Well, the fact is . . .’ Time for a little tactical disloyalty. ‘I’ve been with the same agent for some years and I can’t honestly say he does a lot for me.’ (That bit, at least, was true.) ‘I was thinking, if this partnership with Lennie develops into anything, there might be arguments for us being jointly represented.’

  ‘You might have a point.’ Miffy didn’t sound too bowled over by the idea. ‘Of course, I do specialize in the variety area. Clubs, summer season, panto, that sort of scene.’

  ‘Yes, well, that seems to be the way my career’s moving at the moment.’ Absolute lies, Charles thought as he said it. On the other hand, it was moving more in that direction than it was in any other. In every other area of the entertainment business its customary stasis obtained.

  ‘OK. Come and have a talk about it. Fill me in a bit on what you done and so on. We’ll see if an arrangement is going to be mutually beneficial. How’re you placed?’

  ‘As you know, we’ve just started rehearsals for the telly. But I think there’s going to be some kind of script conference this afternoon that won’t involve me. So I’ll be free later.’

  ‘OK. Come along about four then. You know where we are?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘The name’s not on the door yet, ’cause we only just moved, but when you get here, it’s second floor.’

  The new address of the Miffy Turtle Agency was, Charles decided, a step up in the world. It was in Argyll Street, just next to the London Palladium, maybe in the hope that success would rub off by contiguity. Miffy Turtle obviously had hopes of expansion to afford such an address; it also explained his anxiety at the prospect of losing his most lucrative clients.

  The move had been very recent. The reception area was littered with half-emptied boxes and piled-up folders. The girl behind the typewriter looked as Cockney as she had sounded on the phone. Sharp, pert little face, sharp, pert little body. The sort of girl you’d never dare make a pass at for fear she’d laugh at you.

  ‘Mr. Paris, innit? OK, I’ll just go in and see if Miffy’s free.’ She went through the door to an inner office and returned after a brief exchange. ‘Won’t keep you a minute. Take a seat.’

  He could hear a low hum of conversation from the office. It sounded like a female voice with Miffy’s. A large framed poster leaning against the wall prompted visions of a leggy chorus girl and Charles fantasized a little as to what would come out of the office. In a rather adolescent way, he had built up an image of Variety work as sexier than legitimate theatre.

  But he couldn’t indulge in such fantasies; it was more important to prepare himself for the approaching interview.

  It struck him that he was in danger of becoming a joke figure for his repeated murder accusations. Like a pimply youth proposing to every woman he meets, he seemed constantly to be gearing himself up to another confrontation. Janine Bentley, Paul Royce, now Miffy Turtle. Thank God he felt confident that he was finally on the right track. If this proved to be another mare’s nest, he would look ridiculous. He decided that in future murder investigations (if any) he should try to avoid confrontations. Just build up a dossier of evidence and then hand it over to the police. Though, in this case, there would be a hell of a lot of explaining to do before he could get down to details and, from his own experience, the police welcomed amateur detectives about as avidly as elephants welcome umbrella-stand manufacturers.

  Something buzzed on the girl’s desk and she ushered him into Miffy’s office. Charles did a slight take when he saw that the agent was alone. There was another door facing his desk, which must lead to another exit. The fantasy chorus girl had gone that way.

  In spite of the chaos in the outer office, efforts had been made to put Miffy Turtle in a setting worthy of a West End agent, or at least the setting in which West End agents appear in West End plays. He sat in a swivel chair upholstered in dark brown leather. Across the large mahogany desk his clients were offered a matching reproduction Chesterfield. On the wall there were framed photographs of people Charles didn’t recognize, girls in sequinned dresses, men with big bow ties, all with insincere smiles and insincere messages scrawled across them. Either side of the window red velvet curtains hung, the skimpiness of their cut suggesting that they were not designed ever to be pulled.

  Miffy maintained the image. He wore a pale green three-piece suit; the heavy gold cuff-links and chunky identity bracelet were very much in evidence. He looked like a footballer giving a pre-match interview.

  To Charles it all seemed wrong. In his experience the really big agents worked from dusty garrets or anonymous boxes. Dickie Peck, one of the most important of the lot, had an office as musty and in need of decoration as the bar of a provincial rep.

  Miffy rose expansively and gestured to the Chesterfield. As close as this, Charles was very aware of his adversary’s powerful build. A little chill spread over him at the thought of what he was about to do.

  ‘Glad you could come so soon, Charles. Like a cup of tea, eh?’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Miffy pressed the switch of his intercom and gave the order. The self-conscious way he used the machine confirmed the impression given by its glossy exterior. He had kitted himself out with the complete set of props when he moved into the office.

  ‘Nice place.’ Charles said it to gain a little time and because he thought he might as well at least start on a friendly basis.

  Miffy glowed. ‘Yes, I’m pleased with it. I’ve always had this theory that if you’re going to move into the big league, you got to look as if you’re there already.’

  ‘Not a bad principle. And you are moving into the big league?’

  ‘Sure I am. Whole scene needs a shake-up. All the top names in the agency business are old men now. Need a bit of young blood. It’s wide open.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Good for my clients, yes. Now, like I said on the phone, I only deal with Variety stuff. Fine while you’re with Lennie doing that sort of work, but if the calls start coming through from the Royal Bloody Shakespeare Company, I wouldn’t know where to begin.’

  ‘The Royal Bloody Shakespeare Company has managed to do without my services for the past eleven years and I doubt if they’re planning a major policy switch.’

  ‘No, I was speaking, like, generally. I mean, that’s what you are basically, an actor, isn’t it?’

  ‘I suppose so.’ Charles hesitated. He was feeling uncomfortable. He could go on with this banter indefinitely, but if he didn’t make some sort of move soon, he was going to walk out in ten minutes under contract to the man he had come to accuse. He blurted out, ‘I’ve come about Bill Peaky’.

  ‘Bill Peaky.’ Miffy looked bewildered.

  ‘Yes. I know he was murdered.’

  ‘Murdered.’ Again the repetition sound genuinely flummoxed. But Charles did not have a chance to assess the reaction. He heard the soft click of a door behind him and saw Miffy Turtle’s eyes rise, puzzled, to the person who had just come in.

  Charles turned to find himself looking up the barrel of a small black pistol at the end of which was a tight-lipped Carla.

  Miffy spoke first. ‘What the hell are you doing, love?’

  Her voice had entirely lost its elocuted veneer. ‘It’s all right, Miff. I shoul
d have told you before. He came sniffing round the house with this murder story, but I thought I’d thrown him off your scent. Now it looks like we’re going to have to keep him quiet.’

  She waved the gun vaguely, but not vaguely enough to be reassuring. ‘Now, please, Mrs. Pratt,’ Charles remonstrated.

  ‘Keep still. I don’t know how he worked it out, Miff, but you must’ve made some mistake, not cleared your tracks properly. What are we going to do with him?’

  ‘I don’t bloody know.’ The agent sounded extremely confused. He had not started the afternoon with any plans for silencing and disposing of the bodies of men who knew too much and his mind was taking a little while to accommodate the idea.

  ‘How did you find it out, Mr. Paris?’ asked Carla, the gun still describing unsettling pirouettes in her hand.

  ‘Various things. I found out that Miffy hadn’t been in your husband’s dressing room during the interval on the day he died. That Dickie Peck was set to steal your husband as a client. And then I . . . discovered that you two were lovers. So I put two and two together.’

  ‘And got bloody seventeen.’ Miffy Turtle was through his confused stage and a definable mood had now emerged. That mood was extreme anger. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. Murder? What is this? Are you rehearsing for a play or something? Or is it some bloody stupid practical joke? ’Cause the humour’s wearing a bit thin and I –’

  Carla silenced him. ‘Miffy, don’t bother. You’re not going to persuade him off it now he’s got the idea into his head. We got to decide what to do with him. If he goes to the police –’

  ‘If he goes to the police, they’ll laugh their bloody heads off and tell him not to waste their time. Good God, Carla, d’you really believe I killed Bill?’

  ‘Well . . .’

  ‘Go on, do you?’

  She faced her lover defiantly. ‘All right. Yes, I do. And what’s more, I don’t care. I don’t love you less for it. In fact, I love you more. To think you would do that for me, to think you were prepared to get that little creep out of my life so that we could be together . . . I’ll do whatever you say. What are we going to do about him?’ She pointed the gun at Charles.